AsiaStories

When David and Regan York heard music in their living room in the middle of the night, they discovered an instrument playing on its own. The couple used traditional instruments to connect with local Southeast Asian culture and create opportunities to share their faith, but they didn’t expect spirits to inhabit their means of ministry. Once they prayed over the instrument, it stopped playing, proving God’s power in the spirit world. The local villagers, however, didn’t see it that way.

As I spent days immersed in Chinese New Year symbolisms in Hong Kong, one stands out above the rest — food, or more specifically the dinner table. Sitting around the dinner table with family, for me, is a symbol of the importance of relationship — which is the point of this whole journey. Understanding my own culture has been the guide, but in the end, relationships are what matter the most.

Christmas isn’t celebrated in Ponpit Sayom’s home with ornament-laden Christmas trees, cookies or carolers, but she prays that one day her family will listen to the story represented in the ornaments she makes.

Faruq Jamil, a Saudi Arabian, stopped in the middle of a Southeast Asian market to listen as American teenagers worshiped outside a hostel. Before long, he began a conversation with three International World Changer students about the differences in Islam and Christianity. Soon they gave Jamil an Arabic Bible, so he could study on his own. Only two weeks prior to this meeting, missionaries had arrived with the city’s first supply of Bibles in Arabic.

When International World Changer student Haley Wathen met 10-year-old Hadi Ibrahim, her heart melted. Ibrahim lived in an orphanage with a staff that barely had time to interact with him, and therefore, he received very little affection. He also never talked. Yet, after Wathen held him and played with him, Ibrahim began to speak.

International World Changers student Jessica Newberry planned to visit Southeast Asia with her church and work with orphans. The only other Christian in the Newberry family, her mother, Jan, worked tirelessly to raise funds for her daughter’s trip. But, when Jan died in March 2011, Jessica found herself traveling to Asia without her main support system. God, however, blessed her in the midst of tragedy and used the death to begin to change the heart of her non-Christian father. Months later, she flew to Asia and let God heal her further through the grins of a disabled young woman.